Ethernet Alliance

Ethernet Alliance hosting exploration forum for 40/100 Gigabit Ethernet

The Ethernet Alliance has issued a call for papers for an upcoming Technology Exploration Forum on 40 and 100 Gigabit Ethernet. The forum is scheduled for Sept. 15, 2009 in Santa Clara, Calif. The forum will be open to non-members of the Ethernet Alliance. The event is intended to be a discussion on what additional work needs to be done on the standards beyond the physical layer specification of IEEE P802.3ba

If you want to speak at the forum, submit a proposal. Find details at the link above.

Interop: Fibre Channel over Ethernet demo by Ethernet Alliance

While walking the floor at Interop Las Vegas last week, I met with Brad Booth, chairman of the Ethernet Alliance, who demonstrated Fibre Channel over Ethernet (FCoE). In this video, you can see how the Ethernet Alliance used priority flow control and enhanced transmission selection to protect video traffic moving over FCoE. As Brad describes, this video features a NetApp Fibre Channel array  sending Fibre Channel and ISCSI traffic across an Ethernet network into two servers. The servers are sending streaming video to a monitor while a Finisar Xgig traffic generator is blasting the network with simulated traffic.

University of Florida PHD offers new energy-saving Ethernet idea

At Interop Las Vegas 2008, I talked with the Ethernet Alliance and their University White Paper Challenge Winner Francisco Blanquicet, a PHD student at University of South Florida. In this video he explains the topic of his winning white paper, “PAUSE Power Cycle: A new backwards compatible method to reduce energy of Ethernet switches.” (Sorry about the quality… I’m working on it.)